Linux Star Trek fans, rejoice: CBS All Access now works in your OS [Updated]

[Karlston]

Linux Star Trek fans, rejoice: CBS All Access now works in your OS [Updated]

There's probably a lot of overlap in the Star Trek↔Linux Venn diagram.

Enlarge / No CBS All Access on Linux makes elderly Picard cry.

Aurich Lawson / CBS / Getty

Update, January 31: After this story went live earlier in the week, an Ars reader reached out to speculate that the problem was most likely due to enabling VMP (Verified Media Path) on CBSi's Widevine server. Verified Media Path, similarly to UEFI Secure Boot, makes certain that content will only be delivered to browsers with sanctioned, verifiable "authentic" framework; this is a configurable behavior, and by default, unverified platforms are allowed to receive licenses.

 

This morning we asked CBSi executives to check with their engineers and see if this was the problem. While we never received a response, two hours later, CBS All Access was playing successfully on Google Chrome on multiple Linux distributions. (Firefox still crashes.) For now, we have verified that the fix—which, again, may or may not actually have involved VMP—covers all of CBS' content and not merely the first episode of Picard, which CBS released yesterday on YouTube for a limited time. If we hear official word from CBS regarding what happened behind the scenes, we'll update this post accordingly. The original story appears unchanged below.

 

As of this month, the CBS All Access streaming-video platform—home of popular shows including The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and now Star Trek: Picard—stopped working on Linux PCs, regardless of the choice of browser. Ten years ago, this would have been just another day in the life of a Linux user, but it's a little surprising in 2020. We were originally tipped off to the issue by a few irate readers but quickly found it echoed in multiple threads on Reddit, Stack Exchange, and anywhere else you'd expect to find Linux users congregating.

 

First image of article image gallery. Please visit the source link to see all 4 images.

 

I'm both a Linux user and a CBS All Access subscriber myself, but I had been unaware of the problem since I do all my own watching on a Roku. Technically, the Roku is a Linux PC in its own right—but CBS has its own app in the Roku store, which works perfectly.

 

Moving back to one of my own PCs, I was quickly able to confirm the issue: trailers autoplay properly, and even the ads work—but the actual content won't play on a Linux desktop PC on any browser including Google Chrome. Diving into the Chrome Web Console, we can see HTTP 400 (Bad Request) errors when the browser attempts to fetch a license from CBS' Widevine back end.

 

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Historically, some sites and services have deliberately blocked Linux User-Agent strings from accessing them, under the mistaken belief that doing so would reduce their support load when the service itself actually worked fine. This does not appear to be the case with the CBS All Access issue—changing User-Agent in either Chrome or Firefox doesn't have any effect on the string of errors when attempting to play content.

Enlarge / CBSi uses Widevine—a fully cross-platform DRM protocol, created by Google. Somehow, it's broken anyway.

Jim Salter

The curious thing about these DRM errors is that Widevine—the DRM system CBS All Access is using—is a Google creation. It normally works perfectly well on just about any platform you can think of. Disney+, Netflix, Google Play Movies, and Hulu all use Widevine—and all of those work just fine in Google Chrome running under Linux. So we're a little puzzled about just what happened on CBS All Access' end to break things, even though the service does explicitly state that it doesn't support Linux.

 

In further testing, we can confirm that CBS All Access does not work in Google Chrome on Android or Safari on iOS devices—although specific apps are available on both platforms, which do work. We also discovered that the service is broken under Microsoft's new Chromium-based version of Edge—which, it's worth noting, is likely to soon be the default browser for nearly every new Windows PC sold.

 

In the meantime, Linux users do have one functional workaround—CBS All Access is available as an add-on subscription to Amazon Prime streaming video. So if you need All Access on your Linux PC, you can unsubscribe from your existing subscription, log in to Prime, and start a new subscription there—where the content will play back perfectly well, using Amazon's system instead of CBS Interactive's.

 

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Ars reached out to CBS Interactive for comment; an executive responded, but no answers were available at press time.

 

 

Source: Linux Star Trek fans, rejoice: CBS All Access now works in your OS [Updated] (Ars Technica)  

 

(To view the article's image galleries, please visit the above link)

[steven36]

All  TV shows   can be  watched or stream for free just fine on Linux  with VLC , MPV + addons ,   Kodi  (100s of Links for new shows and sources for old ones) ,  Stermio  + PimpMyStremio or downloaded  from Torrent sites  and DDL  blogs regardless  if they support Linux most have crappy  Linux support anyway 720p or SD if they have it .

 

2 hours ago, Karlston said:

In the meantime, Linux users do have one functional workaround—CBS All Access is available as an add-on subscription to Amazon Prime streaming video

 

Quote

I contacted Amazon support and they said Linux is limited to SD

Source:https://old.reddit.com/r/linuxquestions/comments/bmxqo0/hd_quality_on_amazon_prime_video_with_linux/

 

No thanks it's not worth  the money on Linux ,  i have the banned CBS  stream addon for Kodi it let you watch  One Demand  shows  when they unlock them for free but by the time they do  i can be done  watched it using a other addon or another  way  .

 

Pirating videos  always 1080p  is there and for movies they all get 4k when BLU-RAY  come out  .  Stuff like this just give people  a reason to pirate on Linux  and even on  Windows , Apple  OSes  or Android  who wants to  buy 15 services  just to watch everything on demand ?

 

My favorite way  is to download all    my shows and movies from x265  sites  and then when i want to watch them at night when i dont fell like being on  the internet and want to relax .  i just turn  the net off  and watch what ever I want ,  let me see you do that  on  legal paid steaming sites with windows or Linux,  it want never happen  because  DRM want want allow it , So legal paid streaming always be inferior and a show  to me . I dont want to be online just to  watch a show ,  the way i do it  you dont have to worry  about buffering  or anything.  what happens , if  the site or your internet  has a outage  or you have  crappy internet  speeds or your capped  and  you run out of data  your stuck  buying something that dont even work.,   so really it pointless  to pay for it.  Thats why many people share logins and pirate.